Today is the day! We have visitors coming today! Which is a good thing, because I'm missing home immensely. Having our stuff from Chicago has been wonderfully calming and makes our flat feel homey; however, it makes me miss living in our South Loop loft.

But, before I get sucked into going down the road of homesickness, let me reiterate once more: we have visitors coming! That means America is taking over London for the next couple weeks, and I'm so beyond grateful, because we have been needing this for a while. It's going to be a good day {Ross plays this song on a daily basis, if you click on the link}. In fact, it's going to be a fresh breath of air and a fresh start to the spring season.

And on that note, here's what I learned this week:

1. Cancelled meetings and being late seem to be the norm here. I've had a couple meetings cancelled either on my way to the meeting or as I'm waiting in the office. I'll let you take a guess on how an impatient and prompt American feels when this happened {hint: she was no longer bright-eyed and bushy tailed as she had been on the way to the meeting}. Being late, I can somewhat understand, because as I mentioned last week, it takes forever + a day to get around town; however, I would just plan accordingly {Karma is going to bite me in the butt now and cause me to be late for my next meeting. Who would be laughing then?}

2. No. Delis. Anywhere {insert a starved American in a desert searching, crawling + clawing, begging for a sammy}. There are claims of being a deli, but it's not what we're imagining with heaps of meats and cheeses and condiments and toppings to choose from. There are only premade-can't-make-any-substitutions sandwiches, sandwiches which have been sitting out for hours and hours, available here. Can a girl get some JP Graziano here?!

2.5. That being said, and I've said this before {I think}, the breads + cheeses here are delish. The "salad" as they call the tomato + lettuce toppings are fresh. So they have all the makings for a tasty, hearty American sandwich, but they just don't know how to put it together. Maybe that's my calling here: a deli owner + manager. We may be on to something...

3. Dogs are always in pubs. And the dogs are always well-behaved in pubs, just hanging out with their owner who is paw-tying the night away. Unfortunately, Angel has yet to display proper British manners so she will not be attending any pubs in her near future. Or ever for that matter.

4. At a nearby "American" club, employees, dressed in cowboy hats + boots + bandanas, greet you with an enthusiastic "Howdy!" in front of boxes of pop-tarts. It's funny, because I don't know the last time I said "Howdy" to someone at home. And I don't know a single place, besides a grocery store, that sells pop-tarts or uses it as decor. So I'm not sure where they got this perception of us, but it is drastically different than how Americans truly act.

5. American food apparently means stacks on stacks on stacks of meat. Look at this photo of a menu at a restaurant claiming to serve "American sandwiches." Seriously, take a very close look at the sandwiches, especially the one named "The Punisher." Really?! Again, I don't know about you fellow Americans, but I don't eat like this. I'm actually quite appalled this is our stereotype.

6. No one does St. Patty's day here.

7. They also don't do March Madness here. I'm not sure what's worse: no St. Patty's celebration or no March Madness betting or discussion {and I don't really enjoy basketball it's more of a school/state pride thing for me and now it's an American pride thing for me}. Go UD!

8. For my teacher peeps: I volunteer as a library assistant at a local school and after reading one of their report cards, I learned that schools here take into account value-added scores. I didn't know that was an international measurement.

9. Another one for my teacher peeps: the school management is so super serious here. Zero-tolerance for anything, including what seems like talking. I came from a district where a loud classroom meant cooperative, student-directed learning + high student engagement + autonomy, and thus, learning was happening. Here, it seems as if learning means direct instruction from the teacher, which means the classroom is eerily quiet and you can only hear the teacher's voice. Now, this could only be my experience from volunteering and subbing, so I need a little more time to really confirm {or reject} my initial observations, but it's extremely different from my own practice and beliefs as an American teacher.

9.5. One final education note for all my teachers out there {happy one week till spring break, by the way!!}: Coding is a required part of UK's national curriculum.

10. This may be an obvious + silly statement, but today is the first day of Spring in America and in London! The dates of the seasons don't change here, unlike Mother's Day and Daylight Savings Time.

11. One final thing, these trees below are all over London. While they look like shriveled-up old ladies, I love them! The streets that are lined with these trees are beautiful. Anyone know the name of these trees?